Tag Archives: U.S. politics

ending welfare as we knew it

Washington Monthly has an interesting post on Bill Clinton’s welfare reforms. I admit, even though I lived through it I didn’t know much more than the sound bite version. The fuller version is that while he did allow Congress to drastically scale back welfare as it was known at the time, which was cash assistance to poor families with relatively few strings attached, he drastically scaled up the earned income tax credit, which ended up helping more people. The article ends by making an interesting case that the debate has actually shifted somewhat to the left since the 1990s, and there is actually somewhat of a bipartisan consensus that more is needed to fight poverty and help the poor develop job skills. At the same time, the poverty rate among children and minority children in particular is still shameful.

What did happen is that Clinton seized on one element of the conservative welfare reform agenda – work – and used it as leverage to create the broadest expansion of federal spending on poverty reduction since the New Deal. Welfare recipients should work, Clinton agreed, and the 1996 legislation set both a five-year time limit on benefits and imposed, for the first time ever, a requirement that recipients work to receive aid.

But Clinton also argued government’s obligation to “make work pay.” “No one who works full time and has children in the home should live in poverty,” said Clinton in 1996. It was a bargain that would win over the public, which soon shed its appetite for punishing the poor that conservatives had done their best to encourage. It also enabled Clinton to push through his ambitious agenda of new programs aimed at helping the working poor.

Clinton’s biggest win was the expansion of the EITC, which was framed as a precondition to passing welfare reform and which Congress passed in 1993. Today, the EITC is the federal government’s largest anti-poverty program, delivering $63 billion in benefits a year to nearly 28 million families. This makes it nearly four times the size of the federal block grants under Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) – the successor to AFDC. Researchers credit the EITC for dramatically increasing workforce participation for lower-income women (more so than the reform of AFDC). According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the EITC lifted 9.4 million people in working households out of poverty in 2013.

election poll

In the most important poll of the U.S. election season, 65% of kids say they do not want to be President when they grow up.

facts and figures on illegal immigrants

The Week has some surprising facts and figures on illegal immigrants in the U.S. Just for fun, I’ll state it in the form of a quiz:

About how many illegal immigrants are there, and what percentage of the U.S. population is that?
What percentage of illegal immigrants here now have been here for more than 10 years?
Is the number of illegal immigrants increasing or decreasing?
What percentage of illegal immigrants are Mexican?
Obviously, “illegal immigrant” means they crossed the border illegally, right?
What percentage work? What percentage pay taxes? What percentage are receiving public assistance?
What percentage have committed criminal offenses?

Answers (and I’ll repeat the questions, because it would be annoying if I didn’t):

About how many illegal immigrants are there [Answer: 11 million], and what percentage of the U.S. population is that [Answer: 3.5%]?
What percentage of illegal immigrants here now have been here for more than 10 years? [Answer: 66%]
Is the number of illegal immigrants increasing or decreasing? [Answer: decreasing, from a peak of about 12 million in 2007. ]
What percentage of illegal immigrants are Mexican? [Answer: 50%]
Obviously, “illegal immigrant” means they crossed the border illegally, right? [Wrong: about 60% did, but 40% entered legally and overstayed their visas]
What percentage work? [Answer: 73%] What percentage pay taxes? [Answer: 50%] What percentage are receiving public assistance? [Answer: 0% of adults, although children who are not citizens may receive public schooling and emergency medical care]
What percentage have committed criminal offenses? [Answer: 7.5%]

August 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

There may be an accelerating feedback loop where forests stressed by climate change absorb less carbon, leading to more climate change, and so on. Biomass burning in Indonesia was particularly bad this year. Meanwhile, a new model suggests that fairly modest climate change may have led to the collapse of the Mayan civilization.
A former U.S. secretary of defense thinks the risk of nuclear war is higher now than during the cold war. The Republic Party platform appears to be outright in favor of nuclear weapons, while the Democratic Party platform includes a tepid commitment to maybe “reducing reliance” and spending on nuclear weapons. Jeffrey Sachs says the Syria War has become essentially a U.S.-Russia proxy war.
“Earth Overshoot Day” arrived on August 8, 5 days earlier than last year. Humans may have essentially depleted the natural capital of North America at this point.

3 most hopeful stories

There is new technology for tracking energy use in our homes.
There is new technology for mapping street trees.
There is new financial technology out there that may disrupt the traditional financial industry. Meanwhile, ride sharing has torpedoed the traditional taxi industry, with the value of Philadelphia taxi medallions dropping from a peak of $545,000 in July 2014 to $50,000 in March 2015.

3 most interesting stories

Bokashi is a system that essentially pickles your compost.
There is an unlikely but plausible scenario where Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, could become President of the United States this fall. Speaking of implausible scenarios, I learned that RIchard Nixon made a serious attempt to pass a basic income bill in 1969.
Here is a short video explaining the Fermi Paradox, which asks why there are no aliens. Meanwhile Russian astronomers are saying there might be aliens.

Robert Gordon

Robert Gordon has an op-ed in the New York Times talking about productivity growth, inequality, and the Presidential candidates’ stated policy positions.

Rapid productivity growth in the dot-com era of the late 1990s originated in computer manufacturing — information and communication technology equipment — but this manufacturing has vanished since almost all such equipment is now imported.

This effect of that new technology was another important source of growth. Out went typewriters and calculating machines, replaced by personal computers, spreadsheet and word-processing software, web browsers and e-commerce. Productivity also boomed in retailing, as Walmart and other “big box” stores revolutionized retail selection, layout and supply chain management.

But by 2004, the digital revolution had achieved most of its transition in business methods. Not much has changed in offices and at retail stores since then.

His basic thesis is that we are past the peak of this particular wave of technological progress, and he doesn’t see another wave on the horizon. So technology is not providing that slow but relentless underlying trend of productivity growth right now, and the shorter-term underlying cyclical factors are also on a downward trend (size of the skilled labor force, income inequality, uncertainty over health care, retirement and education). Tax and infrastructure investment policies suggested by the candidates could help somewhat with these shorter term factors. He generally supports socialist policies like we see in “Canada, Australia, and the Nordic countries”.

My own thoughts: It’s tough for politicians to support policies that advance long-term productivity growth, like great education and a level playing field for businesses of all sizes to innovate and compete. First of all, the costs of these policies come due during their terms in office while the benefits accrue long afterward. This is a basic problem of democracy – elected officials can be punished by voters for taking on those short term costs, and solutions can involve voluntarily transferring more power into the hands of un-elected technocrats, which they have little incentive to do. (Nonetheless, many other democratic countries manage to do better than us.) Second, the interests of a few big businesses (finance, fossil fuels and the military-industrial complex) have outsize, undemocratic influence over our (U.S.) politicians allowing them to write laws unfairly in their favor and at the expense of everyone else, even businesses in other industries. This problem could be solved by a courageous amendment to our constitution, but again politicians have little incentive to cut off their own sources of funding.

Politicians can talk about infrastructure because that creates short-term jobs while also helping the economy in the long-term. We need good planning though if we are going to build the smart infrastructure that can really reduce friction in the economy while minimizing environmental impacts and improving our living environments. We don’t have that currently, just some vague ideas about building lots of roads and bridges and maybe some power lines and we’re not sure about pipelines.

Gordon rails against “defined contribution” pension plans, but I still think there is a place for them. While social security is reasonably well run at the federal level, pension plans at the state, municipal and corporate level are terribly run. So I would say either get rid of all those in favor of an expansion of social security, or go to defined contribution. Plans could be designed to help individuals manage risk more effectively (using life cycle funds and annuitization, for example). In Singapore, the system is nominally defined contribution, but the government “tops up” individuals’ contributions – everybody contributes a similar amount as a percentage of their income, then the government matches contributions from lower-income individuals at a higher rate so they can end up with similar retirement savings as higher-income individuals. This could work in the U.S., but we would have to first prevent the finance industry from hijacking the rules to siphon off money for itself.

Of course, we can also hope that the wave of technological progress is in fact not past, we are just in a momentary lull before it continues to pick up in an exponential (but episodic) fashion as it has throughout history. I am 100% positive that the history of technology is not over. The only question in my mind is whether, if we are in fact in an episodic lull, it is going to last long enough to ruin a generation or two for us puny individual humans who only live 70 years or so.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Andrew Bacevich on BillMoyers.com shows how decisions that happen on a President’s watch, even an almost universally respected and even revered one like Eisenhower, can have consequences decades later.

As for Eisenhower, although there is much in his presidency to admire, his errors of omission and commission were legion. During his two terms, from Guatemala to Iran, the CIA overthrew governments, plotted assassinations and embraced unsavory right-wing dictators — in effect, planting a series of IEDs destined eventually to blow up in the face of Ike’s various successors. Meanwhile, binging on nuclear weapons, the Pentagon accumulated an arsenal far beyond what even Eisenhower as commander-in-chief considered prudent or necessary.

In addition, during his tenure in office, the military-industrial complex became a rapacious juggernaut, an entity unto itself as Ike himself belatedly acknowledged. By no means least of all, Eisenhower fecklessly committed the United States to an ill-fated project of nation building in a country that just about no American had heard of at the time: South Vietnam. Ike did give the nation eight years of relative peace and prosperity, but at a high price — most of the bills coming due long after he left office.

This caught my eye during a week when events during the Iranian Revolution (1979) are influencing the 2016 election. And the revolution was in turn caused CIA participation in destabilization of a democratically elected Iranian government in 1953. And the destabilization of Iran had begun far earlier under the British, who openly sought to control the natural resources of the region.

Bill Clinton’s decisions in the 1990s on trade, drugs, and financial deregulation are also being discussed in this election. I think we are already suspecting that George W. Bush’s invasions of Iraq and even Afghanistan in the early 2000s will go down as our country’s greatest blunders of modern times. I wonder how some of Obama’s decisions on intervention in the Middle East, relations with Russia and China, and financial regulation (or lack thereof) will turn out in the long run.

Dick, Bush, and Johnson

Ronald Feinman proposes a scenario where Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate, could be become U.S. President in the fall, with Mike Pence as his Vice President.

in theory, if neither major party candidate wins 270 electoral votes, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives for the first time since 1824. In a Republican controlled House, Gary Johnson, in theory, could be elected President with the lowest percentage of popular votes in American history, far less than John Quincy Adams’ 30.9 percent in 1824 or Abraham Lincoln’s 39.8 percent of the vote in 1860…

So at least, there is a long range possibility that on January 20, 2017, we could have our third President Johnson, after Andrew Johnson in 1865 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1963. And we would have a Libertarian President, the first third party candidate in history to be elected President, albeit by the House of Representatives.

But at the same time, under the 12th Amendment to the Constitution, either Mike Pence or Tim Kaine would become Vice President, as only the top two candidates for the Vice Presidency can be considered by the Senate, although the top three candidates can be considered by the House of Representatives for President. Since the Senate is majority Republican, that would likely make Mike Pence Vice President to serve with Libertarian Gary Johnson as President, which would make for a very interesting and weird situation, never having occurred before in American history.

And this does not even account for the popular theory that voters are subconsciously attracted to candidates named Bush, Dick, or Johnson.

the party platforms on nuclear weapons

Yesterday I suggested a realistic path to elimination of U.S. nuclear weapons – phasing out of everything but submarine-launched weapons as they become obsolete, renewed participation in global nonproliferation efforts, negotiations with other nuclear powers to give up their weapons in exchange for elimination of the submarine weapons, then finally robust inspections and verification. Let’s see what the U.S. political party platforms have to say.

The Republican Platform:

We must modernize nuclear weapons and their delivery platforms, end the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction, and rebuild relationships with our allies, who understand that as long as the U.S. nuclear arsenal is their shield, they do not need to engage in nuclear proliferation.

The Democratic Platform:

Democrats are committed to preventing the spread of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and to eventually ridding the planet of these catastrophic weapons. We believe America will be safer in a world with fewer weapons of mass destruction. Donald Trump encourages the spread of nuclear weapons across Asia and the Middle East, which would weaken the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and he is unwilling to rule out using a nuclear weapon against ISIS.

Democrats want to reduce the number of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons around the world, as well as their means of delivery, while retaining a strong deterrent as long as others maintain nuclear strike capabilities. We will strengthen the NPT, push for the ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, and stop the spread of loose nuclear material. Democrats will be informed by a new Nuclear Posture Review in determining continued ways to appropriately shape our nuclear deterrent, with the aim of reducing our reliance on nuclear weapons while meeting our national security obligations. Democrats will also seek new opportunities for further arms control and avoid taking steps that create incentives for the expansion of existing nuclear weapons programs. To this end, we will work to reduce excessive spending on nuclear weapons-related programs that are projected to cost $1 trillion over the next 30 years.

The Green Platform:

Our government should establish a policy to abolish nuclear weapons. It should set the conditions and schedule for fulfilling that goal by taking the following steps:

Declare a no-first-strike policy.

Declare a no-pre-emptive strike policy.

Declare that the U.S. will never threaten or use a nuclear weapon, regardless of size, on a non-nuclear nation.

Sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Our pledge to end testing will open the way for non-nuclear states to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which has been held up by our refusal to sign the CTBT. Honor the conditions set in the NPT for nuclear nations.

Reverse our withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and honor its stipulations.

End the research, testing and stockpiling of all nuclear weapons of any size.

Dismantle all nuclear warheads from their missiles.

The Libertarian Platform

No individual, group, or government may initiate force against any other individual, group, or government.

The protection of individual rights is the only proper purpose of government. Government is constitutionally limited so as to prevent the infringement of individual rights by the government itself. The principle of non-initiation of force should guide the relationships between governments.

We support the maintenance of a sufficient military to defend the United States against aggression. The United States should both avoid entangling alliances and abandon its attempts to act as policeman for the world.

I suppose I like the Green statement best, but I am enough of a realist to suggest we establish moral authority by eliminating most of our weapons, but could keep a small number of submarine-based weapons in place and use them as a bargaining chip to get concessions from others. I am also enough of a realist that unless and until we have some sort of runoff or ranking-based voting, I’ll vote for the best candidate with a reasonable chance of winning. That pretty much leaves me supporting the Democrats’ somewhat tepid but basically on-target message. Getting defense-industry money out of politics would make it more likely that a Democratic leader could actually make real progress toward implementing their rhetoric.

July 2016 in Review